4 Tips For Writing A Successful College Admission Essay

4 Tips For Writing A Successful College Admission Essay What will distinguish your writing and your application is your unique voice. Be willing to take risks, be vulnerable and share your truth. The readers will appreciate the opportunity to learn more about you, and you will get to know yourself better as well. Especially tormented are the perfectionists, you dutiful students who view the college essay as just one more roadblock to be overcome with sheer will. Although juniors may feel like they have a lot of free time right now, the reality is that most high school students are still taking classes â€" they've just shifted into an online format. Once you have written your college application essay, your job isn’t done â€" you need to keep working on it to improve it until you can improve it no further. It is a great idea to have someone else read your essay to provide feedback. In fact, the more people who read your essay, the better. No college application is complete without the personal essay, which can be daunting for many students to write. Many local students want to write about growing up in a diverse environment and how they have been enriched by that environment. While celebrating diversity is great, the problem is that these essays risk falling into truisms. Students write about the diversity of their schools or their city, but not enough about who they are. To put it another way, in a world where everything else is equal between the applicants, a good essay can make a difference. There are, however, different ways to write college essays that can increase your chance for an admission offer and things you can do that may hurt your chances. Perfectionâ€"in college admission and in lifeâ€"is often overvalued. Ask your readers whether the essay provides an accurate depiction of who you are and ask whether it is clear, concise, and easy to read. If you were given a prompt by a certain school, make sure that your essay actually addresses the prompt. Even if you don’t have anyone else who can read your essay, you can review it yourself â€" just take a day or two off after writing it before you read it back so you can view it with fresh eyes. If you succeed, they will look up from reading your essay, and be surprised you aren’t in the room; indeed, they will swear the chair next to them is warm from your having sat in it since Tuesday. While no lives are riding on your college application essays, this is a great time to revisit some of the rules of writing well. They note the topic and quality of the piece, when they discuss whether or not to accept the applicant in admissions meetings. That is why the entertainment factor is so important. Try to write something distinct that will help you stand out from the crowd. Essays on negative life events can be very tricky. Unless enough time has passed since the experience, the essay can be too personal, too much of a rant, or just too hard to read. One rep said the general rule of thumb was no essays on the Four Dsâ€"Drugs, dating, death, and divorceâ€"but you get the idea. If you want to write about a personal challenge, emphasize what you learned and how you grewâ€"if you dwell on the details, the essay will not achieve its purpose. At Duke, for instance, an admissions officer said her favorite essay a student wrote was about a pair of bunny slippers she always wore. Experts say supplemental essays tend to be short, but St. John’s College bucks that trend, requiring a minimum of 400 words. That’s because the school is interested in seeing students write at length on a chosen topic. As a college essay coach at MEK Review, I encounter many students who have difficulty writing about their hardship effectively. I work with them closely to create an engaging essay that reveals the student’s core character traits and personal growth. The best way to move forward is to see a college essay as a conversation. If they could, colleges would welcome you to campus and ask you questions for hoursâ€"but if they did that, no one would be admitted to college until they were 43. To accelerate the process, they want you to talk on paper; let them get to know you by giving them a guided tour of your heart, your brain, and your life.